


A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall

by Oceansweather



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fourth of July, Hurt/Comfort, Klaus has ptsd, No Incest, Soooooorta, it's 1963 also
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 12:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19464502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceansweather/pseuds/Oceansweather
Summary: In 1963, most citizens of Dallas had no idea where Vietnam was. He knew that because none of the people he passes as he walks look particularly dead inside. The sidewalk scorches his feet even though the sun hangs low in the sky. The air is hot and wet and it feels like a jungle growing in his chest.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A Fourth of July fic about Klaus, trauma, family, and history. Takes place in 1963.





	A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you're gay and traumatized and you love history, and your fave is gay and traumatized BY history. Woo.
> 
> Posting now instead of tomorrow because ST3 comes out tomorrow and I can't even pretend that I could compete with that.

Klaus loved history as a kid, before the ghosts took fistfulls of it and used it like a sheet to suffocate him. He found himself lost in the War of the Roses, the Roaring 20s, the Long March. Until they went to China, briefly, as a stop on the way to the Himalayas for some mission he couldn’t remember. The airport was full of bodies that Mao claimed, and a few followed him onward. Told him about the march with love, or the starving with pain. History became about real people, then. People he had to listen to. People who didn’t know all that much about F. Scott Fitzgerald but a hell of a lot about how her affluent New York father would throw parties so bright she thought she’d gone to heaven. So, yeah, around that time history lost its charm. However, when father was bad and luther was worse, Klaus transformed into a Flower Child full of communal love and a desire to feel love back. Also LSD. Hippies didn’t come until anti-war movements which means they’re too early, right? 

Point is, Klaus knows more history than your average recovering addict. He knows that in about five months an old man with a briefcase will show up on some grassy knoll and shoot a man who, in his opinion, has it coming. Or maybe he’s just angry because July 4th means fireworks celebrating a country that doesn’t deserve it means he’s been lost in his head all day and he can’t do a single thing about it but he also can’t tell anyone without putting everything in jeopardy means that they’ll be angry when he isn’t who he should be means they’ll accuse him of something he wants to be guilty of more than anything means--

There were American troops in Vietnam in 1963. Klaus know this because he talked to their ghosts while strung out and scared in a jungle he didn’t belong in. He talked to their victims, too. As much as he could. By the end of his stay in A Shau he was fluent in Vietnamese because, he figured, what use was a power that made time irrelevant if he wasn’t quick on the uptake? 

In 1963, most citizens of Dallas had no idea where Vietnam was. He knew that because none of the people he passes as he walks look particularly dead inside. The sidewalk scorches his feet even though the sun hangs low in the sky. The air is hot and wet and it feels like a jungle growing in his chest. He watches a teenager, absently, as she picks through a rack of dresses in front of a little store named Pauline’s. She has a Jackie Kennedy bouffant held back by a green ribbon that matches her green dress which matches her green shoes. He wants to warn her that, hey, in 6 years your little boyfriend is going to get drafted and he’s going to go to a country you couldn’t pick out on a map and he’s going to kill people who he shouldn’t kill and every week he’ll write you a letter promising you that when he gets back you’ll move out of the city and your baby will have a real forest to play in and then he’ll kill some more people he’ll go to hell for killing if there’s a hell to go to, and then, well, he’ll get shot in the chest and the blood will come out of his mouth, too, and you’ll have to know that you weren’t there, weren’t fast enough to hear his last words or offer him some last comfort and he’ll be dead and for what? For another six years of cruel, worthless fighting? Why does he have to die, she’d ask? And Klaus would laugh but it would scratch his throat on the way out and he’d say trust me, kid, the dead are the lucky ones. Instead, he settles on telling her that the dress she’s picked is beautiful. If he had money, he’d pay for it. Her poor husband. 

There’s a ghost with a hand on his shoulder, then, and for a second Klaus hopes it’s, against all odds it might be--well it isn’t Ben either. Not that he wants to see Ben right now. In fact, the handsome young man with the hole in his head isn’t as unwelcome as someone who might ask too many questions. Someone who might stoop low enough to wonder about what’s going on inside of Klaus. He’s got a leather jacket which is a plus, pretty eyes, a beautiful smile, but he isn’t--

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Two years ago that voice would’ve made Klaus melt. The ghost has a slight southern twang, and he sounds like syrup. Instead, Klaus keeps his head forward, his lips as still as he can. 

“I can’t talk to you.” The man hurries his way into Klaus’s path, and Klaus does his best not to cringe as he walks through him. Semi-corporeal means wading through a spider web. Pudding. Something.

“Now don’t be like that. I’m just trying to be friendly. I know your type.” The ghost doesn’t seem to notice himself passing through people as he walks. 

“Oh? And what type would that be?” Klaus doesn’t know where he’s going. Away from their hotel, yes, but beyond that?

“I see the way you’re shaking. My buddy Danny? He can give you something to make that stop.”

God, Klaus wants to say yes. 

He left the hotel--a little family business named Stardust Motel because they don’t know what Stardust is yet--about three hours ago. He made it, he guesses, about three miles away. Mostly, he walked in slightly larger circles through slightly weirder neighborhoods hoping for, well, something. It didn’t come, and his family didn’t either. The thought settles like a stone in his stomach and he tries to think about the stone soup story he read as a kid. It doesn’t work. 

God, it’d be so easy, wouldn’t it? All he has to do is let this dead man lead him to some alley that may have been abandoned back in the 50s when Johnny McGreasey died. It wouldn’t even be a commitment, really, would it? To follow where the ghost was going? His case worker at the center always said progress wasn’t linear, anyhow. 

“Well that’s great, really, but I still can’t talk to you. We’re trying to fit in” Klaus says. He digs his nails into his arm as he walks. Buildings start getting taller around him and he realizes, with a little smile, that he knows exactly where he’s headed. If he prepared now he could make some good money on a worthwhile Zapruder film. Maybe buy a little cabin in Montana like they’d planned. Make a phone call. He’d even call it the Katz tape. 

“Who’s we?” The ghost replies.

“Don’t worry about it.” 

He considers going into a little diner he saw two blocks back. He could pretend he was lost before and that he was headed there all along. Maybe they’d be playing music and the fireworks--a tradition in America since July 4th 1777--wouldn’t sound so much like exactly what they sound like. Or maybe his family would get hungry and go to eat there, if they’d let Allison in, and they’d find--

“Come on, buddy, yes or no?” The ghost tries shoving Klaus and, unfortunately, it works.

“You’re dead,” Klaus says, “you, yeah you right here? You are dead. You’ve been dead since, if I had to guess, 1950...5. It’s 63 now. You’re dead and I’d guess that your druggie friends are dead too, yeah? Been there. High turnover rate. You’re dead. Leave me alone.” Hm. Maybe shouldn’t have shouted that. The eyes of a young family stick to him as he picks up his pace away from the diner and towards a grassy knoll. Or maybe a tall building with one of the 20,000 windows that secret service would decide not to check in 5 months. Maybe if he broke in and threw himself out of one they’d--

Better not to make a scene. They’re trying to fit in. Also trying their best not to change history, Five says. Better to keep their heads down and matter as little as possible until they need to matter a lot. That’s why Klaus can’t do the only thing he really wants to. 

Twenty nine minus six equals 23 equals seven years younger than Klaus. One thousand five hundred miles, give or take, a $41 dollar flight and a cab ride from an old airport to a small town in New Jersey to a boy who worked at a bar and knew a lot of the wrong kind of people but didn’t like them none so knew that Klaus couldn’t possibly be the wrong kind of people and he was so close so close so goddamn--

Well, if Five wants to keep a low profile he shouldn’t honk his damn horn on a residential street. He also shouldn’t drive. There’re adults for that. There’re adults for that in the same goddamn car. The greaser ghost disappears after sending Klaus a sad look. He'd like to pretend he hasn't been on the receiving end of looks just like it enough to know it as pity. What kind of sad sack do you have to be to be pitied by a ghost?

“Where the Hell did you go?” Diego asks because he’s the fastest to hand-crank his window down. Klaus lets himself laugh at Diego, and he lets Diego see it, because really, it’s a stupid question. He’s here. And, Diego, of course he doesn’t know where here is. Diego’s eyes don’t even crinkle. No hint of a hint of a smile. 

“I just needed to get out. I’m fine.” He hopes they get what he’s saying. He doesn’t need to add humiliation to the fear and the exhaustion and the blisters on his feet. 

“Where are your shoes?” Allison throws the pad of paper against the window, over Diego’s lap. 

“Well, hopefully on the feet of the creep I traded them to for a pound of heroin. The alternative is that he’s jacking off into them like some sort of horrific fleshlight and, honestly, I don’t like that thought.” He hopes they’ll catch the joke. At least one of them doesn’t. The ‘Klaus what the hell were you thinking?’ is on Diego’s lips, on it’s way out and into the open when Allison pulls Klaus’s shoes out of her bag. He smiles then. A real smile. How Allison. 

“Why did you say that?” she writes after handing him the shoes. 

He can’t answer. 

“Felt funny” he answers anyway. 

“Hey,” Diego says, “get in. We’re going to the Fourth celebration.”

Oh. Great.

“Oh a celebration all about me? You guys really shouldn’t have.” He doesn’t make any move to get in. 

“Jackass.”

“Since when do we do things like celebrate holidays, anyway? Thought we were more the ‘brood in silence because the rest of the world has the audacity to have fun’ type of family.”

“Do you have anything better to do?”

Yes. Anything. Anything would be better. Except, oh, they left the front seat open for him which means they remembered his claustrophobia. He shuts his eyes. Breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth. Again. The air is sticky and hot but God bless America it smells like a dirty city and not a jungle. 

The floor of the car isn’t cool, but it’s cooler than the pavement. Seatbelts wouldn’t be mandatory for another 5 years, so no need to worry about that constriction. He knows the boy whose death sparked it, actually, and his mother. Horrible. 

He closes his eyes and takes in a shaky breath, but can’t find it within himself to let it out. His shoulders feel rock solid and immovable and his legs feel like water and his heart feels loud and fast and all too present. It’s made the mistake of thinking he’s still alive. 

“Are you okay?” Vanya asks. He barely hears her.

“I’m sober, yes,” he says. At least it got him to breathe out. He still can’t bring himself to open his eyes. 

“That’s not what I asked, Klaus.” She touches his shoulder and he nearly jumps out of his skin. She noticed. He can tell. 

“Yeah, well, it’s what you meant.” He feels a pad of paper hit his lap. He jumps at that, too. It pries his eyes open. 

“That’s not fair” he hears Allison scratch at her hair as he reads it. Her handwriting is so clear, so neat. She doesn’t smudge the ink when she writes because she’s not left handed. She’s perfect, by all accounts. And yet... Are they stupid? Bringing Allison? Diego? This isn’t 2019 New York. 

“God, it’s not like you actually care.” He didn’t mean to say it. He doesn’t even know if he really means it.

“Jesus Christ, Klaus” Five says. He doesn’t take his eyes off the road. A silence fills the car and he wishes he could drown in it. They’re waiting for him to speak. 

Always the people pleaser. 

“Sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m fine. Really. Just haven’t slept well lately, or whatever.” Not a lie. He hasn’t slept a whole night since Vietnam. He’s still in withdrawal. He’s in the south in 1963 and everyone he sees on the street would hate him if they knew a single God damned thing about him. Whatever. 

“Jet lag on a monumental scale. It’s normal. I’ve been through it a thousand times” Five replies. It’s a mercy but Christ, Klaus hopes it’s an exaggeration. 

“This is so stupid” Klaus says instead of responding. 

“Why?” Luther asks. He’s stuffed into the trunk and Klaus is struck, for a second, with a lot of guilt. 

He thinks. Allison knows better than him what it’s like to be black in 1963. She decided to come anyway. She knows something he doesn’t, then. He’s stupid to think they hadn’t considered it. Then again, he’s stupid to pretend that he just meant this one particular venture. 

He decides on a “we don’t fit in here” and watches the little brown houses with little green lawns and little white fences and the people that live in them and god he’s back to wanting to warn them because the Vietnam War is coming and the Vietnam War destroys everything it touches. He knows the end of this story. 

Ben appears on the dashboard and Klaus doesn’t even have it in him to jump anymore. Klaus lifts an eyebrow to ask ‘you hear all that?’ and Ben nods in reply. 

“What’s gotten into you lately?” Ben asks, instead of offering any comfort. He’s never had good bedside manners. 

Klaus doesn’t really know how to answer that. Ben knows, vaguely, that Klaus was gone for five hours which was actually 10 months and in those 10 months Klaus fell in love but, no, didn’t get any more sober. He knows Klaus came back after things went bad. He knows what bad means.

“I don’t want to talk about it” Klaus says. Five gives him a quizzical look but doesn’t say anything. None of them do. 

“You’re not making any of this any easier for yourself” Ben says at the same time Five says “We’re here.” The absent chatter that had built up in the back dies down again as they all pull themselves off of the summer-leather seats. 

They’re not at the celebration proper, Klaus notes. It would be crowded if they were. They also wouldn’t be at the base of a tall building on a certain grassy knoll. 

“We’re breaking in and going to the roof” Diego says. At least Klaus still has his overly expressive face going for him. No need to ask questions. 

The sun sets to the west of them, of course, and the light catches orange on the clouds in the sky. It would be dark soon. Klaus swallows the fear building in his throat. He put his shoes on to thank Allison for bringing them, but they’re rubbing his blisters and filling with blood and the whole thing is horrible and familiar. So, so familiar. He can taste the soil and the pollen and the spit from Da--

Diego gets the door open before Five does, and he looks damn smug about it, too. They don’t have to take the stairs, thank god, but the elevator is cramped and there’s no lights on. Klaus wishes he was high. Or drunk. Or something. Allison gives his hand a gentle squeeze and he doesn’t have it in him to explain that the touch does more harm than good.

When he gets to the roof he lights a cigarette--a regular old cigarette that only takes away a bit of his nerves and gives him cancer--and counts the dirty looks that roll his way. He wishes he could care about them. 

A few stars peek out from behind the light cloud cover, and the warmth that the building trapped has dissipated enough that it just feels nice instead of burning him. If he were well, he thinks, he’d be having a nice night. God, he should be having a nice night. 

The first firework catches him off guard, and that’s enough. He’s gone. The night he should’ve been having didn’t matter any. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vanya notices first. She’s deaf in her right ear, but her left is as sharp as always. She hears it, and she feels lucky. Klaus is muttering to himself, and he’s crying, and shaking, and none of it sounds normal. Not even for him. 

She gets close enough to feel his chest and, yes, he’s breathing too fast and his heart feels like it might burst out of his chest at any moment. He flinches violently at her touch but doesn’t make any move away. She waves a hand in front of his eyes, but she already knew by the glaze over them just how that would go. 

Allison slaps Vanya with her notebook as gently as she possibly can. It’s still too hard. 

“He’s not responding” Vanya whispers. Luther is nearby, talking with Five about the effects of fireworks on air pollution. 

Allison reaches for Klaus then. Barely touches him, really, on his head. She registers the sheer amount of sweat and that’s it before he’s crawling away, backwards, in a blind panic. Vanya says a quick thanks to nobody in particular that there’s a wall for Klaus to hit instead of a slight lip and then air and then ground. He lets out a broken sob when he realizes, on some level, that he can’t get any farther away. 

Luther notices this, and Vanya puts herself between them. 

“What’s going on?” Diego asks, picking himself up off the floor and walking closer to Klaus all in one fluid motion. 

“I don’t know,” Vanya replies. She can hear the shake in her voice, “I didn’t do it. I just heard him talking to himself and he was--I’m sorry.”

“This isn’t you, Vanya,” Five replies. He places a hand on Vanya’s shoulder and watches Klaus from a distance. The light is low enough that he’s mostly invisible backed into his corner. Vanya’s reminded of a wounded animal, ready to spring. She wishes she’d said that, because the next sound that overwhelms her is the sound of Diego’s wrist cracking on the cement. Klaus slammed it down before Diego even thought to pull it away. 

“Okay, don’t touch him. Obviously,” Five says. He moves closer, but still out of reach. 

“What the hell is going on?” Diego says through the syrup of pain that coats his tongue. Vanya can hear it. He’s cradling his wrist. 

“Isn’t it obvious?” Five asks, but he doesn’t wait for a reply. “He’s got PTSD. This is a flashback to something. I haven’t been around so I couldn’t guess what but, of course, it does involve gun--Vietnam. That son of a bitch didn’t just go to 1968, he went to Vietnam.” Five is talking to himself, not them, but they hear it anyway. 

Vanya is lost. Completely. On so many levels. She doesn’t know how to help Klaus, or if she should even offer to help Diego, or what Five is talking about. Vietnam? That isn’t even happening yet, right?

“He lost someone,” Diego says, “ I took him to a VFW bar and he lost his shit at a picture. I-I didn’t think… I mean he was high out of his mind at the time.”

“No, this isn’t on you. I should’ve realized with the dog tags. Jesus, what the hell was I thinking?”

“So you mean our brother was in Vietnam?” Luther says “He was, what, in Vietnam and he fought and that made him break Diego’s wrist? That doesn’t make any sense. Vietnam was over before we were born.”

“Time travel. And the fireworks sound like guns,” Five replies as Allison shoves a piece of paper that says “sibling, not brother” into Luther’s face. To his credit, Luther apologizes to a Klaus who can’t hear him. Vanya would smile if she weren’t busy keeping herself as between Klaus and Luther as she possibly can. 

And just like they began, the fireworks end. A grand finale that sets even Vanya’s heart aflutter with anxiety. It’s so loud, so constant, sounds so close. She watches as Klaus’s hands jerk their way to his ears and his eyes squeeze shut. A familiar position. In the back of her head something clicks in place and she feels sick with guilt. 

She hears him say, quietly but clear as a bell, “I’m sorry, Dave, I have to go” and when he opens his eyes again he looks surprised to see them. She watches his eyes scan the horizon, and their faces and come to terms with what they see. She catches his eyes falling to his hands and his hands wipe nothing onto his shirt. She watches him take a deep, ragged breath, and turn himself back on. 

The change is almost nothing. It’s a slightly taller spine, a little smirk, a head tilt to the left, shoulders back. He makes dead eye contact with Five, eyes wild and blank all at once. 

“Well wasn’t that fun? Picture perfect family bonding, huh?” He says with venom as he tries to pick himself up off of the floor. His legs shake, and he has to lean on the wall. Vanya sees it. 

“Klaus I didn’t--” But Klaus doesn’t let Five finish.

“Hey little man, don’t worry about it. I do this all the time. Totally used to it. I’m gonna walk back to the hotel, though.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Vanya says as she watches him scratch at his arms.

“Excuse me?” Klaus replies. She thinks, briefly, that nobody else would’ve stopped him in his tracks. She did, though, because she hasn’t used up all her good will yet. 

“You shouldn’t be alone. Klaus that was...That was really scary for us. To see you like that, I mean. I can’t imagine what it was like for you. You need to be safe.”

“I’m fucking clean.” His rage scares her, a bit. She wasn’t expecting him to rush her.

“I know. I know, Klaus. I promise that isn’t what I’m saying. Jesus Christ! I care about you. I don’t want you alone because you--you just relived a warzone, right? That’s horrible.”

She hopes he knows she loves him. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” 

“You don’t have to. Please, just stay. Let us help.” 

“You can’t! None of you can. I fought in a war that never should have happened and the only person, the only person who has ever loved me, died in it. I killed innocent people because I wanted to be near him and I broke myself forever and it was all for nothing because he died and I’m alive. You can’t help me because I don’t want help. I want peace, and I’ll never get that. Never. God fucking bless America.” 

Klaus looks Vanya in the eye, and she thinks for a second that in spite of his words she’s gotten through to him.Then he’s gone. His legs stopped shaking enough to carry him away, and he let them. She knows, somewhere in her, that she should have stopped him. She didn’t, though. None of them did. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Klaus lets himself into their hotel room a few hours after they get back. He’s silent, but steady. Vanya gets up and gives him a one-armed hug, and takes it as enough of a victory when he lets her. He smells like cigarettes and night air and he’s stiff.

“I’m just so tired” he says into her hair. She’s had worse hellos. And worse apologies.

“Sleep, then.” She doesn’t know why she says it. Like he hasn’t thought of that?

“I can’t.”

She lets him go, and he walks to the sink and rinses his face. She misses him in eyeliner. For the first time since they arrived she realizes that, hey, there’s very few pieces of Klaus that aren’t illegal here. 

“I can read to you? Allison has earplugs in. She won’t wake up.” 

He looks at her, and she flinches on impulse. His eyes are softer than they were on the roof, though. He smiles a little as the beam of a lonely headlight streaks his face through their curtain. 

“What’s the book?” He asks, as he makes his way to his bed. She notices that he doesn’t have shoes on.

“I promise I was reading it before everything.”

“Well now you’ve got me intrigued.”

“A Farewell to Arms.”

He laughs, but it echoes through his body like he’s hollow. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks! I don't have any expectations that the show will actually have them in 1963 Dallas for the Fourth of July but I'm gay and I do what I want. 
> 
> Also I battled the formatting on this for half an hour. Good God. Hope it's readable.


End file.
